Trevor MacAusland laughs at the notion of turning Launch36 into Launch72. For the past few months, the head of Saint John-based PropelICT has been working hard to launch Lauch36, a program designed to take 36 companies to a market-ready stage over three years.

But a funny thing happened as the project developed: there was about twice the talent and capacity for mentorship that MacAusland and his colleagues had originally envisioned. As a result, the first cohort of companies going through the accelerator consists of not six but 11 young and growing companies.

While there are administrative challenges to working with a larger group, the cohort has benefited from having more members. “It has enhanced the perspective of the entire cohort because we have more people sharing their experiences at every meeting,” says MacAusland.

From the time PropelICT announced Launch36 last November, it was dealing with twice the demand it had anticipated. MacAusland had expected about a dozen young companies to apply for Launch36, but PropelICT had received 25 applications by the deadline; the list was soon trimmed to 20.

As MacAusland and his team began to wend their way through the process, with boot camps and the like, seven of the entrepreneurs realized that there was little or no market for their proposal in its present form, so they left the program. That in itself was a success, says MacAuland, because Launch36 helped those entrepreneurs understand the shortcomings in their proposal before they spent years trying to develop them.

So 13 companies entered Mentor Day, or Pitch Day, in January—the day in which the companies must pitch to a panel of potential mentors, then six companies are chosen and assigned mentors. “Some of the teams that looked weakest on paper ended up being the strongest on Pitch Day,” says MacAusland.

It turned out that more than six pitches were strong enough to merit inclusion in Launch36, so the organizers decided they had enough mentors for 11 companies. MacAusland was willing to make the necessary administrative adjustments to accommodate the larger group.

One positive spin-off is that Launch36 became more than a New Brunswick exercise. Two of the 11 companies are based in Halifax; they travel to New Brunswick a few times a month for the meetings. The move is in keeping with the gospel of Gerry Pond, the godfather of New Brunswick tech investment; he preaches that tech development should be undertaken regionally, not provincially. In the future, PropelICT wants to strengthen the project’s regional focus.

Since this is the first Launch36, the program is constantly evolving; MacAusland is currently discussing new developments with potential partners. He’s talking with officials at the new Pond–Deshpande Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UNB about the possibility of the centre’s entrepreneurs entering the program. Similar talks are taking place with UNB’s technology management program about the possibility of co-op students spending their work terms building their own company rather than working for an existing one.

I asked MacAusland whether Launch36 would become Launch72, since it seems to have doubled in size in a matter of months. He laughed, saying he was concentrating on the current cohort, although the growth means he’ll soon be hiring a program director.

Conversely, I wondered if there would only be three or four companies in the next cohort, given the large number in the current one. “Six companies are already banging on my door for the next cohort,” says MacAusland.